And you're not getting "too sensitive". You're just classy and know the difference between lack of class and not.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person sensitive to these things. Of course, this Chocolate&Zcchini group is a collection of sensitive beings, I'm sure of that.

The other 4 men I ate with in Chicago at Harry Cary's place were the top people in our company: the CEO, the CFO, VP's etc. I never would have picked a chain restaurant in the first place. And I didn't notice any of the others at the table at all concerned with the service or the food. They ordered and ate and didn't for a moment reflect. It was lunch time, here was a restaurant, let's eat.

Sadly, I think you nailed it, Sarape. My wonderful, wonderful friends suffer in silence when I'll exclaim in mock/shock that "Can you believe that they don't have a butter spreader on the bread & butter plates!?" They love me so they console me, all the while they shovel the food down their gullet.

Here's a bit of wisdom that may help the insufferable perfectionists among us:

Life's easy to live
for someone unscrupulous,
cunning as a crow,
corrupt, back-biting,
forward, and brash.

But for someone who's constantly
scrupulous, cautious,
ovservant, sincere,
pure in his livelihood,
clean in his pursuits,
it's hard.

I have a heavy duty set of kitchen scissors that are used for everything from opening packages to chopping chives--fast and efficient. They also take the wing tips off fowl (for the stockpot) and they travel outside for flowers and herbs.

I love cooking shows but especially The Contessa (yes Erin is right), I just like her easy approach to everything and her "comfortableness". I'm lousy with names but the Surreal Gourmet can be fun if somewhat over the top (Erin, he would take your Coast Guard event and make everything look like boats and bowling balls!) The women from the Canadian Living Kitchen are wonderful.

Joined: 18 Oct 2004Posts: 1654Location: Within view of Elliot Bay, The Olympics and every ship in the Sound

Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2005 8:22 pm Post subject:

ejm,
Giada DeLaurentis may be a bit annoying but I have really enjoyed her food. I hate it when she says chewy.
Tony Bourdain,I get a kick out of his arrogance. I agree his books are teriffic. Have you ever been to Les Halles? We eat there almost everytime we go into the city._________________"It's watery....and yet there's a smack of ham."

Thanks to my mother, I am also hooked on utilizing scissors in the kitchen! While I typically use them for herbs or green onions, my mom - like ejm - also uses them for hardier tasks such as cutting up a chicken.

Coincidentally, this past weekend, our local PBS station repeated an older episode of America's Test Kitchen in which they discussed and rated kitchen shears. While my mom is very successful with heavy-duty scissors costing just a few dollars, ATK recommended Wüsthof's Kitchen Shears. Below is a link to their review:

Sarape, sorry to hear about your disappointing visit to Harry Caray's. While, yes, there are many better dining experiences elsewhere in the city, hopefully the company made up for it!

Lastly, re: food celebrities, ditto everything Erin said. I would also add Nigella Lawson (non-Food Network personality) to my favorites list - not necessarily because her food and recipes are great, but because I love her attitude toward food. Graham Kerr is enjoyable to watch as well -- his positive nature and smile are infectious!

Edited because I'm a newbie to listing a URL ... apologies if you were unsuccessful in linking to the review earlier!

boom boom...yep..must be time to eat...yep there's a place to eat...yep that's food...yep food to mouth...chomp..yep there, that's that...

happens often

and then there is the wonder of a cherry one cherry...sublime..

does the way we eat depend on our personality?...or how we are feeling at the given moment...

I've eaten without tasting any flavour even though I knew the flavour was there...and at other times flavour plus bursts in me as I savour a morsel..._________________"I've never accepted the external appearance of things as the whole truth. The world is much more elaborate than the nerves of our eye can tell us." - James Gleeson

Yes, I agree that Giada DeLaurentis' food looks good, Erin and she seems to know what she's doing. There are a couple of things that she has made that I think we neeeeeeed to try - and I've only seen a very few of her shows. And I was lukewarm towards Ina Garten until we got her cookbook for Christmas. Now I quite like her.

The Canadian Living Women make me cringe.

I have no idea what the show was called but did anyone see the one where the fellow grilled steaks in his fireplace? Now THAT'S a great idea. As good as having scissors in every room (a vain attempt at getting on-topic )

I have 2 pair of scissors aside from poultry shears. Both are inexpensive but get the job done. One pair is dedicated to non-food use - opening bags , cutting butcher's twine, etc. The other pair is food-only, and I especially love them for snipping small amounts of fresh herbs.

I need to replace my poultry shears. They were my grandmother's, and I'll always treasure their sentimental value but they're not very efficient after almost 80 years of use.

I need to replace my poultry shears. They were my grandmother's, and I'll always treasure their sentimental value but they're not very efficient after almost 80 years of use.

Bless you, brighidsdaughter; I have such a soft spot in my heart for my Grandmother!

I was so blessed, that when she died, I inherited 100% of her kitchen equipment. This included a flawless condition, double-wide, Hoosier cabinet that was my Grandfather's wedding present to her in 1920. Every single item is still in there: the flour sifter, the sugar canister, the spice jars....and ALL of the original paperwork and recipes.

I have used it every single day for the past 12 years, since I inherited it, and I find that my Grandmother is over my shoulder when I am by it's side.

Here's a thought: Take a shadow box, from a frame company, and line the background with something that has meaning to you. It could be old-fashioned chicken themed wall paper; old recipe cards from your Granmother, etc.

Then take her shears and mount them over the paper and hang it on your wall. The original use may be gone, but the love and sentiment remain.

This included a flawless condition, double-wide, Hoosier cabinet that was my Grandfather's wedding present to her in 1920. Every single item is still in there: the flour sifter, the sugar canister, the spice jars....and ALL of the original paperwork and recipes.

Here's a thought: Take a shadow box....

Don't know what a Hoosier cabinet is, but it sounds like I'd like it. Neither do I know what a shadow box is, but it sounds like some type of shallow box or picture backing which could be wall mounted. I never thought of making a collage out of old recipes, but that may be a good idea. I have a hundread or so post cards from my great grandparents dating from 1905 to about 1960 that I'm planing on mounting and displaying in some manner -- at least some of them.

I treasure what I've received from my grandparents' kitchen. One side of the family is Italian, and that grandmother only had big aluminum pots; the other side of the family is German, and that grandmother had a bunch of interesting kitchen accoutrements. My Italian grandmother cooked the basics: polenta, rissota, spaghetti, ravioli, gnnochi, chicken-noodle, and bean soup, and sausage. Her food was delicious. The German grandmother had an interesting kitchen, but I never liked her food. My Italian grandmother spoiled me with her spaghetti sauce. I have never found an Italian restaurant where the sauce could match my grandmother's. She cooked in the Northern-Italian style._________________' She says, 'I am the glamorous type.' I said, 'So what?'

Yeah, the early Graham Kerr was a lot of fun to watch. Then he found religion, AA and moved to New Zealand for a time I think. His later shows were pleasant but lacked the energy of the earlier one._________________Vivant Linguae Mortuae!!

[quote="Sarape]Don't know what a Hoosier cabinet is, but it sounds like I'd like it. Neither do I know what a shadow box is, but it sounds like some type of shallow box or picture backing which could be wall mounted. I never thought of making a collage out of old recipes, but that may be a good idea. I have a hundread or so post cards from my great grandparents dating from 1905 to about 1960 that I'm planing on mounting and displaying in some manner -- at least some of them.[/quote]

Sarape: "Hoosier"-type cabinets were to kitchens in the early to mid 1900's, what computers are to US today. No kidding. If you can't think of life without the convience of a computer, that's how earlier women felt about these.

Prior to the 'invention' of the "Hoosier" cabinet, women ran all over the kitchen. There was no such thing as wall-to-wall cabinets, and since most kitchens among the wealthy had servants or slaves to man them, it didn't matter a wit that a woman literally "ran herself ragged" cooking all day.

All that changed when slavery ended and young women coming to the city wanted jobs that weren't serfs. They went to work in mills, and dress shops and factories with the onset of the war, WWI. This changed forever the design of kitchens!

Suddenly, you had wealthy and middle income women, with only ONE or no servants, and they had to do all the cooking. Free labor was gone. There had been cabinets that bakers used, where they kept huge flour bins above them, and then zinc slabs below the cabinets to process the dough. THESE were the precursors of the "Hoosier"-style cabinet.

Early models were barely rip-offs of the baker cabinets, but, as women everywhere embraced them as 'time & step savers', well....America rose to the challenge and began a marketing war to capture every single $$$ that socialites and prairie women had.

Just like KLEENEX has come to enbody ALL tissue, the name "Hoosier" has come to embody these cabinets, although many manufacturers made them and actually surpassed the Hoosier company for style and effieciency. But, because Hoosier Company was the first mass produced and made, the name came to cover all of the manufactured units.

Here's a picture of a deluxe unit; the later units were very fancy and had many more drawers and useful bits & pieces. If you want, think of it as a laboratory, and the more organized it was, the better the end results. My model is actually a Sellers brand.

A pristine cabinet, double wide (5-6' vs. 3-4') can go for $4000+ dollars. The October 1914 Saturday Evening Post advertisement at the right is a good example of The Hoosier Manufacturing Company's unique marketing scheme. As shown just paying $1.00 down "'puts White Beauty, the New Hoosier, in your Home". A $1 down and a $1 a week bought you a new cabinet. <THAT is how my Grandfather bought my Gran's cabinet. It cost him $200 new, and is now valued at over $6000, because of it's condition and original equipment.

"Hoosier" cabinets were at their peak in the 1940's and began to take a real dive during the WWII. Men left the factories,to go to war, women left the kitchen, and when men came back, they moved into the suburbs, where new kitchens were much smaller and the birth of wall-to-wall cabinets began.

What's wonderful is the resurgence of interest in these, and I don't mean to stuff crappy quilts and fake geese inside of. These are being reproduced pretty faithfully for COOKS that realize that you don't have to move ONE step to make an entire meal. One of the old ad campaigns had a "Kitchen Scientist" counting the footsteps that an average women needed to travel, to make a simple meal. The Hoosier cabinet trimmed it by 80%! That's energy saved for the golf course, in MY opinion!

This is a picture of a Shadow box; essentially, it's a frame built around a shallow box that you display memorabilia inside of. If you had the recipe cards mounted in the background, with the shears and other small items from your grandma's in the foreground, it could be very charming. And the nice thing is, they are all preserved and undamaged in the box.

Bea- The pic of your Hoosier cabinet didn't come thru for me the first time. I'm so glad it did the second time. That one is very deluxe indeed. The ones I've seen before seemed to have glass doors and big, rounded off metal hoppers for the flour and sugar instead of those nifty glass jars that look much easier to clean.

I first became acquainted with the concept when I was collecting miniature scale furniture. I've marveled at them every since and, as a baker, I'd just love to own one or have the space for one in the kitchen. In fact, it's sorta amazing that someone hasn't revived the idea and applied it to the high-end custom cabinets that are so highly specialized these days.

I was going to say that a Hoosier cabinet is to the kitchen what a Wooten desk is to the office. I'm guessing they come from roughly the same period (though I was [i]amazed to think of the Hoosiers still in production up to the 40's).

Anyway, thanks for the image. We may need to invent a new concept just for you: instead of the "bon mot" I think you may be the local master of the "bonne image". You always come up with a good one!

That photo of the Hossier cabinet looks about exactly like what my mother has in her family room. They found it about 30 years ago and have been using it as a liquor bar. Their's has a lever which controls a roll-up door for the lower-left section.

So, in essence, I grew up with a Hossier cabinet and never knew it. I wish I would have been interested in cooking all my life. I would have saved a bunch of my old grandparents' items. But, as a male, I wasn't part of the kitchen activities like most of the women. At least I know better now.

BTW, this is certainly one of the, or The, friendliest forums. Possibly that's due to the higher collection of women compared to most other on-line groups._________________' She says, 'I am the glamorous type.' I said, 'So what?'